


Phantomwise

by Jaxin



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Catwoman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaxin/pseuds/Jaxin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His life, the one he never expected to have, is counted in time After Batman. It's only after he put the cape behind him that he realizes he never really had one in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantomwise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [helplesslynerdy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helplesslynerdy/gifts).



By the time he drags himself into her apartment, limbs heavy with exhaustion and the scent of smoke still burned into his nostrils, she is already gone. Not that he would expect anything less—she’s a dedicated Houdini, Selina, slipping herself out of any troubles she finds with a grace that leaves him breathless.

He’s sure Gordon had an eye on her. Their uneasy camaraderie was bound to fail as soon as he stopped bridging them; though Jim is a good man, he’s also a good policeman, and Bruce is sure her rap sheet outweighs her charms.

Bruce closes his eyes, takes a breath. After the cloistered decay of Gotham, she’ll want to take herself as far from all of this as possible—sun, warmth, culture. He sets his jaw, forces himself to keep going. Selina makes him want to be more than who he is, that there be more to his life than violence and grand sacrifice.

Where she goes, he will follow.

\- - -

She’s put together on the outside, wrapped in De La Renta like armor, but Selina Kyle is falling apart.

Stupid, stupid,  _stupid_. She should know better by now. You believe in something, you get hurt. It’s practically a law of her universe, but damn him, he’d gotten her to break it (she ignores the small voice that reminds her that she’s never minded breaking laws before).

So that’s it. Another fresh start, somewhere far away from this stinking city and its memories. She never should’ve come back. Surely one miserable childhood was enough, without handing over a miserable adulthood as well. At least Holly’s future is secured, even if it had taken two Renoirs as a Van Gogh to do it. She might hate Selina for a while, but the youth home will be good for her. The headmistress will ensure that, for her own health if nothing else.

The Air France line moves forward as a special report lights up the TV screens, filling the terminal with shots of Bruce’s doomed plane towing the bomb out over the ocean.

There’s a lump of burning ice in her throat, and she doesn’t hear the flight attendant.

“Mademoiselle? We need to sign you in.” The blonde pauses, impatient, and raises her voice. “Mademoiselle? Your name?”

“Selina Kyle. ” It’s out of her mouth before she can think, her eyes glued to the blinding explosion, and she freezes as soon as it makes its way to the open air.

Shit. Shit shit shit  _fuck_  shit—the attendant clicks on a button and the ticket is churned out of the machine, and she hands it over with a bland smile. “Thank you for choosing Air France, Mademoiselle Kyle. Enjoy your flight.”

Selina forces herself to smile, her mind churning. She makes her way to the ladies washroom before the expression leaves her face.

It worked. It  _worked_. She’s been getting pulled aside because of that name since she was fifteen. There’s no possible way this is a coincidence. With numb hands, she slips her phone out of her purse and breaks past the security wall into the police database. Her heart hammers against her chest as she types in her name, waiting for the familiar rap sheet to appear.

Nothing. Not one result appears for a Selina Kyle.

She logs out of the police network and taps into the government’s, leaving the results open for as many agencies as she can think of.

There isn’t a single hit beyond a generic birth notice.

She resets the network to cover her tracks with shaking hands. He did it, probably before she ever decided to come back. She’s free.

And he’s gone.

Her grip tightens on the phone until it creaks. Dimly, she hears the boarding call for her flight, and she pulls herself together, sliding on the oh-so-familiar mask of nonchalance.

She can’t get out of here fast enough.

\- - -

He’s an observer, Bruce Wayne. He’s spent a lifetime locked away from the world, first by tragedy, then by privilege, then by revenge.

He couldn’t call himself happy, but there is an equilibrium to his isolation.

Selina knocks him off balance. For the first time someone has joined him in the darkness, but he wants to see what she looks like in the light.

So he follows her and he watches her, cataloging the sway of her footsteps and her stiletto-edged smile. She wanders across his childhood memories, her heels clacking through the streets of Paris, her gaze absent as they travel through the Alps.

She hasn’t noticed him, which doesn’t bolster his ego as much as it furrows his brow. There is something very wrong here, but he’s not sure what—he’s never seen her at rest, isn’t sure that she ever could be. The instincts of a thief are still with her. Selina cases every store she enters, eyes flickering carefully behind dark glasses, but it’s perfunctory at best. She leaves empty-handed.

The victory she had fought so hard to attain seems meaningless to her. The obsequious cooing of salespeople certain that they’ve found the client of their dreams leaves her stone-faced, and the bright-eyed appraisal of the rich and famous barely touches her.

Bruce trails behind her on her lavish tour, watching carefully as she becomes ever more withdrawn.

It isn’t until she ends up alone in Paris—again—that he decides to approach her.

\- - -

Selina strolls along the Seine, following the tracks of other glamorous ex-pats. She’d studied them in school, the veterans and the muses, the poets and the playboys. They’d lived lives of glittering ruin and she’d snorted at their idiocy, determined that she wouldn’t fall into the same traps.

Now she has more sympathy for them than she wants to admit. She slides into a tiny, wood-paneled bar, the mirror behind the grizzled bartender darkened and distorted with age. His gaze slides appreciatively over her as she seats herself, but she’s too accustomed to it to notice. Her heels latch onto the little stool, and she glances over at the bartender. “Scotch. Neat.” It’s the first time she’s spoken to someone in two weeks.

He raises his eyebrows but Selina ignores him, staring at the bar. The wood is oak, solid, and mottled with the marks of generations of drunkards.

Her father would’ve loved this place. The thought brings a crooked, humorless smile to her face, and she knocks back the scotch with a grimace, wincing at the burn before raising a finger for another.

Might as well do him proud.

\- - -

Hours later the bar has closed and she is strolling down foggy streets, her feet moving across the cobblestones with the careful precision of the very, very drunk. She pauses under a bridge and stares at the orange streetlights flickering across the water, near hypnotized by the shifting patterns of light and dark.

A light-haired Frenchman slides up next to her, his mouth locked into a leering smile. “Combien?”*

Selina pulls up her reserves of frustration and disgust, pinning him with a glare. His smile falters, turns angry, and he becomes the very picture of insulted masculinity. He is faster than she expects, and one hand is gripping her bicep as he scrabbles at her shirt. Her sleeping instincts roar into life and she swivels around his grip, pulling his arm straight in front of her before slamming the flat of her hand against his elbow. He shrieks in pain, an ugly, animal sound, and clutches his shattered arm to himself. Selina’s pulled herself into a beginning stance, her body nearly itching for this fight. It’s been far too long since she’s beat someone to a bloody pulp.

The man nearly trips as he scrambles backwards, eyes wide and frightened. There is a stain spreading down the legs of his pale linen suit, and he whimpers as he finally gets his legs in place and flees.

Selina scowls. She should unfurl her muscles now, release the anger into the air as her trainer taught her, but this has been the closest she’s had to meaningful human interaction in months, and it was with a drunken pervert. She turns and slams her fist into the rough brick of the bridge, savoring the pain.

She’s been alone her whole life, even when her mother was swaddling her in desperate, comforting lies, her smile wide and her bruises vivid. Solitude should be enough. It has to be enough. She won’t let herself think about blue eyes and a brief flash of steadfast belief after a lifetime of doubt.

Then her memory pulls him forward, still with that slight edge of sanctimonious concern, and she should’ve expected this. She’s never been able to escape her own mind, after all.

\- - -

His hands curl, uncurl, as he steps forward. He wanted this to be perfect, didn’t want to speak to her until he was sure of her reaction. He’d been torn between chasing down the drunken bastard and ensuring Selina was all right, but there’s blood dripping from her hand and his decision is made.

He gives himself a moment of silence as he moves towards her, watches her eyes lock onto him, drift past him. “Selina?”

She laughs. He knows it isn’t a happy sound, isn’t sure if she’s ever laughed from joy around him. “Of course it’s you.”

His lips tighten. “Are you all right?”

She tilts her head, ticks her fingers. “Well, let’s see. I’m drunk off my ass and so lonely that I actually wanted to spend more time with that prick—granted, it would be quality time between his face and my fist—but that can’t say anything good.” The blood from her fist runs down to her ivory silk cuffs, but shes ignores it.

“You’re bleeding.”

She shrugs. “Done that a lot in my time. It’s nothing new.” She sways a little on her teetering heels, and he finally notices the spicy tang of expensive scotch that surrounds her.

“Selina. You’re drunk.” The words are out of his mouth before he can think, before he can scold himself for the mind-numbing obviousness of it. He waits for her mockery but she just gives him a humorless smile and a stumbling curtsy, still not meeting his eyes.

“I am my father’s daughter, after all.”

Bruce freezes. He’s never heard a mention of her father before—her mother he knows of, yes, a waitress with Selina’s eyes and a very short life. Marian Kyle had been the only name on Selina’s birth certificate, and she had refused to name the man that repeatedly put her in the hospital until he put her in the morgue.

“Might as well make him proud somehow.” She laughs. “What the hell did that old bastard put in my drink?” She leans forward, and Bruce’s hands itch to catch her, stabilize her. She peers at him, scans him up and down with the same penetrating, professional gaze he’s seen her give countless jewelry stores. She snorts. “You’d think my imagination could do better.”

He ignores the taunt, steps closer carefully. She doesn’t shift away, so he reaches up to touch her shoulders, carefully, tentatively. She freezes, even her breath stilling, and he wills her to look at him, just look. He hates feeling this helpless.

The silence settles on them like fog, smothering everything it touches. Selina swallows, finally meeting his eyes. “Bruce?” He gives her a crooked smile, and it’s all the answer she needs.

Her fury is terrible to behold. Her hands lash out, flying like the wind as she steadies herself on her Louboutins and hurls herself at him. He hasn’t trained for weeks, has been following her trail and submerging himself into this world he was so ready to leave behind. He’s been trying to make himself better for her, to make himself human for her, but his instincts don’t fade like a summer tan.

Her fists slam against him with surprising force, but he’s been training for years and his body moves without his mind, redirecting her force and darting around her furious attacks. The veins in her forehead stand out and she lashes out even harder, trying desperately to touch him, to hurt him.

Bruce parries her attacks effortlessly, so focused on her fury and his worry that he doesn’t notice her foot draw up, the edge of her heel wickedly sharp. Selina never has been one to travel defenseless, after all.

There is a flash of searing pain from his calf, and he cries out, stumbling for a moment, the blood a wet stain on the cobblestones.

Selina stills, breathing heavily. Her eyes are wide and vulnerable, and her voice cracks. “You bastard.”

His lips quirk up as he braces himself against the bridge, pushing past the burning agony of his leg. “My parents were married, actually.”

Her hands tighten. “Don’t try to be cute. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Selina—”

“Don’t ‘Selina’ me.” She steadies herself on her bloodstained heels, wrapping solitude around her like a cloak, and walks away.

Bruce sets his jaw and follows her, because of course he’ll follow her. He’s always been stubborn. He’s not sure how Alfred’s heart has held up all these years, and ignores the familiar guilt.

At the next street corner, she stops. Her posture is very stiff. “What do you think you’ll accomplish with this, Bruce?”

He ignores his own pain, ignores hers. He has to make sure she’s all right, after all. “It’s too late for you to be out alone like this.”

She spins around, eyes near spitting fire. “’Like this’? What do you mean, 'like this’?” Her eyes narrow. “I’d think very carefully about what you’re about to say.”

A man steps out of a nearby doorway, thundering bass shuddering through the dark club behind him. “Hé, bébé. Laisser les Américains derrière. Venez avec moi.”**

Bruce’s hands tighten, rage coursing through him that this man would look at Selina and see so little. The man lurches forward and a smile unfurls on Selina’s face, a slow, uncoiling thing, and Bruce watches the noose tighten around the man’s neck as he stumbles forward.

The man’s voice is low, but far from quiet. “Oubliez les paralyser. Laissez-moi vous montrer de quoi un homme réel peut faire pour vous.”***

The man reaches out, hands curled eagerly in anticipation, and there is a moment of stillness, a moment when Bruce looks at the present and sees the future.

Selina’s smile will grow, will shift. It becomes something cruel, something feral. Her legs, the legs the man has been ogling so openly, will flash out from beneath her skirt, but not in the way the man would want. First, she will humiliate him. He will sink to his knees, groveling before her like he should. Then the real pain will come.

Bruce watches, wincing, as she knocks him down and then unconscious in three graceful moves, then straightens her skirt.

She glances back at him. “Bad things happen to men who follow me.”

He twitches his shoulders, spreads his hands. “Guess I’ll have to chance it, then.”

She stills, half-turned away from the drunkard on the ground. When she speaks, her voice is hollow, sad. “What are you doing here, Bruce?”

He takes a deep breath, wincing at the steady fire of pain from his leg. “You told me there was more out there than Gotham. I decided I wanted to see it.”

She’s still turned away from him. “I didn’t mean a dirty side street at two in the morning.”

“And yet here you are.”

Selina turns, finally. Her face is still cast in shadow. “That doesn’t explain what you’re doinghere.”

He catches her gaze, holds it. “Yes, it does.”

Her hands clench on empty air, the knuckles harsh and white. “Don’t do this, Bruce.”

He plays at being disingenuous, doing his best to ignore her stillness. “Do what?”

“This.” Both of them know precisely what she’s saying, and Bruce sags for a small moment. She starts to walk away, but her heels catch on the uneven ground. Before thinking, before breathing, he’s there to steady her.

He smiles, the expression not a mask when it’s for her. There’s a tentativeness to his expression that she’s never seen before, and something catches in her throat. She swallows, closes her eyes. The sight of his lips is just too tempting, and she’s not going to fall for this, not going to fall for him again.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t tell anyone. Clean slate, Selina. It wasn’t just for you.”

Her eyes open and she realizes she’s still in his arms, still wrapped up in him (it feels like she has always been wrapped up in him, a thread turned into a tangle turned into a knot). She shifts away from him, her shoulders tight and arms folded. “Don’t you dare. Don’t pretend that this was some sort of reward.”

Bruce’s hands reach for empty air, and he forces himself not to blink. “Why not?”

Her hands fly out, gesturing wide. “A reward for what? For breaking the hearts of every man, woman and child in that city?”

His lips quirk. “I thought you didn’t care about Gotham.”

She lifts her chin. “Who says I do?”

“Selina…” Something has shifted in his voice, something a little bit hollow.

“What?”

He fumbles for words, for once. The world is so clear, so delineated and predictable, but she throws him off. She always has. He clears his throat, remembering a helter-skelter search for a warehouse and the acrid tang of burnt flesh. “There is nothing more cruel than hope.” She flinches, and he steps closer. “I didn’t want to do that to you. Not if it hadn’t worked.”

She is up against him in a moment, her fists harsh and fast. “You idiot. Don’t you ever fucking dare do something like that again.”

He smiles, and it’s real, beautifully, crookedly real. “That was the point.”

Selina flinches, her hands tightening on his collar as she drags him down to her, his lips chapped and warm and perfect.

Not again.

For once she decides to believe, decides to stomp that cruel voice down as his arms wrap around her, more stable than gravity.

She is her mother’s daughter, after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Translations (I don’t actually speak French, so if these are screwy, my apologies, blame Google translate):
> 
> * “How much?”
> 
> ** “Hey, baby. Leave the American behind. Come with me.”
> 
> *** “Forget the cripple. Let me show you what a real man can do for you.”


End file.
